PASADENA – Caltech snagged a commencement speaker who can really tell them to shoot for the stars.

Charles Bolden, a former astronaut who now occupies the top spot at NASA, will be speaking to the class of 2010 on June 11, officials announced.

Bolden is an exciting choice both for students who plan on going into the aerospace industry and those who have always looked up to astronauts, Anthony Chong, president of Associated Students of Caltech, said Tuesday.

“For half the kids, the American dream is to be an astronaut when they grow up,” said Chong, who will graduate in June with a degree in computer science.

As an astronaut, Bolden traveled into orbit four times between 1986 and 1994, including the mission that oversaw the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Before president Barack Obama named him the 12th NASA administrator in July, Bolden was a retired Marine Corps Major General and the CEO of a private aerospace consulting agency.

Bolden is the man charged with overseeing NASA’s radical new approach to human spaceflight.

Last week Bolden announced that NASA was cancelling its mission to the moon and shuttle program that was underfunded and behind schedule.

NASA’s announced new approach will outsource shuttle flights to the commercial industry, while the agency itself focuses on creating new technologies for the next generation of human spaceflight – which may not be anytime soon.

“It will be interesting hear his thoughts on the future of the agency,” said Geoff Blake, a Caltech professor of cosmochemistry and planetary sciences.

Bolden is the second Obama appointee Caltech has scored for its commencement address. Last year physicist, Nobel laureate and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu was the commencement speaker.

“General Bolden is an innovator, an achiever, and a dreamer – characteristics which we know will inspire our graduates,” President Jean-Lou Chameau said in a statement.